


On the Origin of Piety

by Nerissa



Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Devotion, F/M, Family, Gen, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, pre-incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/pseuds/Nerissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cesare's is a very particular type of faith.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Origin of Piety

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meridianrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meridianrose/gifts).



The most charitable soul in all of Rome could not call Cesare’s vigil at his father’s bedside a prayerful one. The Borgia leans, half-stupefied with sleep deprivation, and looks murder at any whom he fancies stares too long at the ailing Pope.

He will fly, dagger drawn, at the first who gives appearance of menace. Damn them, vultures all.

Della Rovere is there. He _dares_.

Cesare would gut the man like the rabid dog he is, but his mother’s warning stays his hand. The slightest disturbance could tip the balance between his father living or dying. Only let della Rovere decide for them both, let the man come at him, and Cesare will end it. But the Cardinal loves his own skin too well, and stays out of reach.

So Cesare, in his own fashion, turns to prayer. But his are not the prayers of a man whose soul is consecrated to the service of their Lord.

_I am meet to worship God, my love . . ._

He spoke those words to Lucrezia on a bright and lovely afternoon what feels like lifetimes ago. She did not call his speech blasphemy, but he’d wondered at the time if she did not privately name it thus.

God knows she had cause to.

Now, propped up beside his dying father by sheer dint of will, his gaze locked on the knot of plotters in the corner, Cesare Borgia does not address his god. Instead, he prays to the brightest and most constant star of his existence. He calls on the name of his sister, and asks that her every power of endurance and forbearance will be fed back into the man who sired her.

_In the name of my sister, who is best of all things I have ever known, restore my father._

_In the name of she who has been more sinned against than sinner, give my father strength to endure._

_In the name of the one I love above all, make my father well._

It is like something from a dream, what happens next. Pope Alexander _heaves_ on the bed, hands fluttering and chest rattling with the torture of his indrawn breath. Shock ripples through the cardinals assembled. Cesare is on his feet, commanding water, which cup he brings to his father’s lips. Rodrigo drinks, retches, spills thick black charcoal and bile from his guts to the ground.

The Pope lives.

The men who prayed for his death tremble at the knowledge, and begin to pray for their own salvation.

Not della Rovere. He flees, but Cesare has knowledge of animal behaviour and human cowardice, and he is ready for the serpent’s retreat. He meets him with a show of strength, of arms, and puts his blade to the neck of the man who would see Cesare’s family destroyed.

He takes pleasure in the sight of the man’s fear.

“Your place is in the Vatican, Cardinal.”

_And in my family’s name I shall see your bones there entombed._

The vow does not leave his lips, but he thinks della Rovere must see the promise burning in his stare, for the man wilts like a late summer flower. The memory of the Cardinal’s terror warms Cesare’s belly all the way to his family’s private quarters, where he bows his head over his mother’s hands and whispers news of life restored.

He escorts the ladies personally to his father’s bedside, and for all that women wear the most confounded clouds of silk and lace about their legs, it’s as much as he can do just to keep pace with them. He has never seen his mother move with such speed in his life. If  Lucrezia runs, Vannozza _flies_ , skirts billowing out around her like a sail. She reaches the Pope’s chamber first of all three, and by the time Cesare has entered the room his mother is already kneeling in pious gratitude at his father’s side.

There was a time Cesare would have scorned her attitude, and another when he might have envied it. Today he can only recognize in his mother’s posture all that she is, strength of will and constancy of heart, and be grateful that she is there to bear witness to this.

“You owe your life to Lucrezia,” he tells his father, and Lucrezia, still devout in a way that Cesare can never be, is quick to minimize her part in the salvation of the Pope of Rome.

“And the grace of God,” she assures Rodrigo.

Cesare, for whom there is no higher power than the force of his sister’s will and the light of her soul, smiles out the window as if at a private joke.

“Yes, and that.”

To him, they are one and the same.

 _I am meet to worship God, my love_ . . .

God has done very little for them, overall. His chosen servants have plotted against Cesare’s family, and Cesare, if he feels anything for God at all, cannot call what he feels by any good name. Even in his father’s survival he cannot see the hand of God. It is Lucrezia who saved their father’s life; Lucrezia who bound up their family with the strength and cunning of her own two hands, and it is Lucrezia who commands of her brother the deepest imaginable devotion.

It is from Lucrezia that he learned devotion to begin with.

It was Lucrezia who asked the question on a sunny afternoon years ago. They were in the garden at the villa, their father newly Pope, the whole thing still as shiny and novel as a gift at Christmas. He stood behind his sister’s chair in much the same way he would later sit at what was so nearly their father’s deathbed, part avenging angel, part acolyte, but Lucrezia on that day had wanted no avenging. Lucrezia then was as the sun in the midday sky, and she knew yet no true sorrow.

“Brother,” she said dreamily, “what changed you thus?”

Cesare, torn from contemplation of her profile, struggled to follow whatever line of thought had prompted the question.

“Sis?”

She looked up; put out her hand and bade him join her on the bench. Then she brushed her palm over his shoulder, tidying him as a child does her favourite plaything.

“You were once determined to be a soldier, were you not?”

“I have not given up that dream.”

“I know you say so. Yet here you are, cleric in God’s service, and to my endless wonder you do not chafe at the restraint of your piety half so fiercely as I thought you might. I think it great testament to your character that one who prefers war can soften his mien in the service of our Lord.”

“Oh,” said Cesare. Then again, because he did not know how else to reply, “oh.”

Lucrezia did not mark his simple-minded answer. She was too absorbed by her original question.

“How is it you taught yourself this humility, Cesare? Worship and piety are the marks of a peaceful soul. Yours is the one soul I know better than my own, and I know too well it was forged for battle. How did you fashion this miracle? How did make yourself so meet to worship, when nature inclined you to war?”

Her question was, as the rest of her, the embodiment of innocence. He was scrupulous of that innocence in those days and he tempered the intensity of his answer with a brush of his fingers, feather light, against her temple. She tilted her face toward him in simple acceptance of his touch, and he bowed his head to her.

They sat forehead to forehead as he breathed the sweet unholy truth into the living gold of her hair.

“I am meet to worship God, my love . . . because I did first worship you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something I couldn't resist writing when I saw your prompt. Love these two together! I hope you enjoyed. Happy Yuletide!


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